Winamp is definitely one of the best media players available for Microsoft Windows. It has a long history, impressive popularity and still has plenty of users around the world. Unfortunately, the project started to lose its popularity due to AOL and their management policies. Winamp got a paid pro version, and there was no UI improvement for many years. After 2013, it was discontinued. However, there is new hope shining on the horizon.
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Being a big fan of Winamp, I was happy to discover that Winamp 5.8 Beta is almost on its way. The new owners behind the project are working to release a new version. Unfortunately, they are not a big team for now, but still Winamp is not dead!
Eddy Richman from the original Winamp team is continuing his hard work to keep our favorite player alive.
Update: So a Winamp 5.8 public beta release could be imminent. It's far from ready, but is certainly usable :-) #Winamp #ItLives
— Eddy Richman (@Ed_Rich) October 19, 2016
Some details of the development have become known. Code from patented technologies and cross-licensed code has been cleaned up. This means Winamp can become 100% free, without a Pro version with all features unlocked out of the box. This will affect MP3 and AAC decoders, the CD ripping feature and the H.264 decoder.
If you are fan of Winamp like me, we can expect something to play with in the near future!
If you are interested in Winamp vNEXT, you can track the following thread at the official forum.
While the official site is still in development, I have collected some nice stuff here. Using the link below, you can download the last version of Winamp which was available to the public, including Winamp 5.6.6.3516 stable and Winamp 5.7.0.3444 beta.
Download Winamp 5, Skins and Plugins
Are you waiting for a newer version of Winamp? Which features do you expect to see in it?
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Great news! I use Winamp since version 1.0 and I love it. I think it’s still the best media player for music! I can’t wait to see Winamp make it’s way back.
Hans
Mee too. Really great news!
And if this would not be enough there are more “goodies” to come!
Dr.O, who was part of Winamp’s development team for more than 13 years is going to publish his WACUP – Winamp Community Update Pack, which contains a lot of bug fixes and plug-ins. This should be end of October according to a post on his blog: https://getwinamp.com/blog/
I am pretty curious which release will be more exciting!
Thanks for sharing the link.
See Dr.O’s twitter, he has featured a nice Youtube player there: https://twitter.com/The_DoctorO/status/789584082283945989
I’m very happy to hear from Winamp. I’ve been using it for years, until Aimp test version 1, when I realized that Aimp is much better.
Speaking about alternatives, I found foobar2000 suitable for my daily use. But I am happy to see that Winamp is still alive.
I switched to AIMP in 2013 after news that Winamp is discontinued.
AIMP is in a constant development, supports numerous skins, plugins, wallpapers (many that supported Winamp).
So i think, with many things moved to cloud, the times of offline (foobar, aimp, winamp) music players is gone.
People now listen to music more on mobile devices, than on PC.
But what I have to do with my awesome local collection I have formed since 2003?
I think people like me will continue to use players you mentioned.
Also, I am using them to listen to online streams. It is not a bad idea. Such apps support multimedia keys, or regular hotkeys you can assign to various operations. Cloud services have nice options, but they are just an addition for me, not a replacement.
Of course Foobar is a valid alternative.
And yes, it’s a very good news that Winamp is still alive.
For sure.
Thanks for covering Winamp. It’s still the best media player available because it’s lightweight, well organized and has lots of great features. Loads of nice plugins as well. I remember the old visual plugins didn’t work well with old graphics cards because they were too slow. More recent graphics cards fixed that.
It’s nice to see Winamp is being revived and updated!
For me too. Btw, the old good Bear the dancer by LionHead studios works like a charm :) Tried it recently just for fun :)
I’m so happy to know that a newer version of winamp is about to see the light. But, anybody knows anything about new developments to the Android version?
I am still using it a lot, I have processed the “pro” version, but all the premium features are gone since some years
Well, never used it on Android.
Personally, I am with an app called Folder Player